ression upon his face, combined with the relief I felt at seeing
him again safe and sound, was too much for my overwrought nerves.

"David!" he cried. "David, my boy! God has been good to an old man.
He has answered my prayer."

It seems that Perry in his mad flight had plunged over the brink at
about the same point as that at which I had stepped over it a short
time later. Chance had done for us what long periods of rational labor
had failed to accomplish.

We had crossed the divide. We were upon the side of the Mountains of
the Clouds that we had for so long been attempting to reach.

We looked about. Below us were green trees and warm jungles. In the
distance was a great sea.

"The Lural Az," I said, pointing toward its blue-green surface.

Somehow--the gods alone can explain it--Perry, too, had clung to his
rifle during his mad descent of the icy slope. For that there was
cause for great rejoicing.

Neither of us was worse for his experience, so after shaking the snow
from our clothing, we set off at a great rate down toward the warmth
and comfort of the forest and the jungle.

The going was easy by comparison with the awful obstacles we had had to
encounter upon the opposite side of the divide. There were beasts, of
course, but we came through safely.

Before we halted to eat or rest, we stood beside a little mountain
brook beneath the wondrous trees of the primeval forest in an
atmosphere of warmth and comfort. It reminded me of an early June day
in the Maine Woods.

We fell to work with our short axes and cut enough small trees to build
a rude protection from the fiercer beasts. Then we lay down to sleep.

How long we slept I do not know. Perry says that inasmuch as there is
no means of measuring time within Pellucidar, there can be no such
thing as time here, and that we may have slept an outer earthly year,
or we may have slept but a second.

But this I know. We had stuck the ends of some of the saplings into
the ground in the building of our shelter, first stripping the leaves
and branches from them, and when we awoke we found that many of them
had thrust forth sprouts.

Personally, I think that we slept at least a month; but who may say?
The sun marked midday when we closed our eyes; it was still in the same
position when we opened them; nor had it varied a hair's breadth in the
interim.

It is most baffling, this question of elapsed time within Pellucidar.

Anyhow, I was famishe